|
Collective
Representation |
A collective representation
is simply a shared phenomenon created by and through our thinking.
Taken together, collective representations constitute nothing less than
"the world we all accept as real" (SA 20). Because of idolatry,
however, we seldom understand the real to be either collective or a representation;
instead, the real becomes a matter of common
sense. We seldom recognize the shaping role we play in creating the
'real" world around us. We hardly seem ready to accept what is, for Barfield
at least, the true common sense that
It is only
because of the thinking that we do, and have done in the past, from childhood
on, that when we look around us, we do not stare uncomprehendingly at a
chaos of unrelated impressions, but perceive an ordered--a coherent world
of beings, objects and events--a world which, to some extent at least,
we can already say we know. (RCA 227)
"I believe it will seem
very strange to the historian of the future," Barfield observes in
Saving
the Appearances, "that a literal-minded generation began to accept
the actuality of a 'collective unconscious' before it could even admit
the possibility of a 'collective conscious'--in the shape of the phenomenal
world" (135).
Barfield's understanding
of collective representations own much to the questions raised by modern
physics' investigation into the ultimate building blocks of matter. The
"really real," the "particles" (as Barfield
likes to call them) out of which all things are made, remain, he notes,
"unrepresented":
[It is well]
to remember, when we leave the world of everyday for the discipline of
any strict inquiry, that if the particles, or the unrepresented, are in
fact all that is independently there, then the world we all accept as real
is in fact a system of collective representations. (SA 20)
But we do not live in
the unrepresented.
Whatever
may be thought about the "unrepresented" background of our perceptions,
the familiar world which we see and know around us--the blue sky with white
clouds in it, the noise of a waterfall or a motor bus, the shapes of flowers
and their scent, the gesture and utterance of animals and the faces of
our friends--the world too, which (apart from the special inquiry of physics)
experts of all kinds methodically investigate--is a system of collective
representations. The time comes when we must either accept this as the
truth about the world or reject the theories of physics as an elaborate
delusion. We cannot have it both ways. (SA 18)
Barfield was very interested
in the question of how given collective representations come to be accepted
as reality, as "collective":
As to what
is meant by "collective"--any discrepancy between my representations and
those of my fellow men raises a presumption of unreality and calls for
explanation. If, however, the explanation is satisfactory; if, for instance,
it turns out that the discrepancy was due, not to my hallucinations, but
to their myopia or their dullness, it is likely to be accepted; and then
my representation may itself end by becoming collective. (SA 19)
Even allowing for the
obvious--that "two people can make the same momentary mistake about the
identity of an imperfectly seen object"' that "the generally accepted criterion
of the difference between 'I thought I saw' and 'I found it was'" is and
always will remain; "that the former is a private, the latter a collective
representation"--profound questions still remain:
How, then,
if "they" are a whole tribe or population? If the "mistake" is not a momentary
but a permanent one? If it is passed down for centuries from generation
to generation? If, in fact, it is never followed by a "they found it was"?
The difficulty is, that then the "mistake" is itself a collective representation.
(SA 28)
For Barfield, of course,
the modern Western mind has, with its "sins of idolatry," been guilty of
just such a mistake.
See in particular
Saving
the Appearances, Chap. III. |
|